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Learning in a language other than mother tongue in IB programmes

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Learning in a language other than mother tongue in IB programmes

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Maayke de Vries is a History teacher, MYP3A Mentor and ATL Coordinator at the International School of Almere in the Netherlands. She shares with us how she gets her students to develop the five ATL skills of Thinking, Social, Communication, Self-Management, and Research. Check out her ongoing Big History Project!

Skills based classrooms are 21st century classrooms, as it prepares students to become successful citizens this century. There has been much talk about these skills and how different institutions have different skills sets, however all have many common features. Schools that implement the International Baccalaureate (IB) call those essential skills Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills. The five skills are: Thinking, Social, Communication, Self-Management, and Research. We all teach students those skills implicitly, as those are necessary competencies for inquiry based learning. but without teaching the skills explicitly, students are not conscious of the skills and not actively engaged in developing them.

In order to let students become more aware of these skills, it has to be taught explicitly. Students need to be aware of which skill is addressed; what their strengths are with regard to these, but also what they can still improve upon. In order to teach skills explicitly, students gather evidence of their progress and reflect on their development.

Here are some examples of how these ATL skills can be taught explicitly. Every now and then, I let students work on a topic that they find interesting. In the USA, this is referred to as Genius Hour, which is derived from practices by Google to give employees free time to explore creative endeavors. Students enjoy spending some time on their own interest, regardless of instructions I give with regard to structure. Students are using the MYP inquiry cycle to embed their inquiry into their interest, thus dividing their exploration into different sections. The final section is a reflection, which in this case is focused on the use of ATL skills. Eventually students indicated one or two skills they used during their exploration: how they used these skills and what they can improve on next time.

Some photos from students in grade 6 (MYP 1), who are getting familiar with ATL skills and of grade 10 (MYP5) who are working with Sutori on their skill development.

Students can also get explicit instructions when learning a specific skill. For example, teaching students media literacy through cross-referencing, requires many scaffolds at the beginning and less in the end. Thus, students are aware that the skill of cross-referencing is taught without the need to focus on subject matter. With each lesson, students perform this skill more and more independently. In the first lesson, students receive a particular claim they have to investigate along with four different sources either providing corroborating or conflicting evidence. By the fifth lesson, students evaluate whether or not a source is reliable by applying the skill of cross-referencing independently. Throughout this process, formative assessments take place for students to understand their own development, and for the teacher to see where more assistance is required. When such moments are documented, it can help students to see the development and areas for improvement.

To make such development visible for both teachers and students, a tool like Sutori can be used to gather evidence of moments where students worked on a particular ATL skill. Sutori now has a framework that allows students to create an ATL skills portfolio, along with opportunities for students to have a reflection moment. This makes it very clear for teachers and students to see what skills are often addressed and what skills are more difficult for students to have a meaningful understanding of.
Here are the specific ATL resources for the IB MYP:

What the final result looks like on Sutori

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Maayke de Vries is a History teacher, MYP3A Mentor and ATL Coordinator at the International School of Almere in the Netherlands. She shares with us how she gets her students to develop the five ATL skills of Thinking, Social, Communication, Self-Management, and Research. Check out her ongoing Big History Project!

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This diagram was inspired by the blog post, The agile learner in a VUCA world, written by @alohalavina. VUCA is an acronym used to describe volatility , uncertainty , complexity , and . Put simply, we live in a fast-changing world and in such unfamiliar environment, we face unpredictable changes, often are required to make decisions in complex systems, and to take uncertain actions that are outside of our expertise. We need to rethink education and build students' capacity for the VUCA world.

Developing becomes more important than ever through the schooling process. Learners must equipped with skills and strategies that allow them to be thinkers, communicators, risk-takers, inquirers, reflective, caring, open-minded, balanced, principled and knowledgable. If we can truly follow the framework of the IB curriculums and develop a continuum, I am hopeful that we can develop students who strive for understanding, nurture passion in self and others, as well as take actions ethically. ​

Having this big picture in mind, we help students to develop these skill and stretch their learnability. One way to do this is to align the objective (learning target), skill indicator, and strategy. Most importantly, we also need to take an evidence-based approach to monitor their progress and provide cognitive coaching conversation. The process of practicing and developing skills must be deliberate in order for students reach mastery. The use of the strategy must be practiced several times as repetition of learning is the key to mastery. We can relate this teaching approach to the concept of apprenticeship. When teaching approaches to learning skills, think about Mr. Miyagi in the the movie, Karate Kid!

Here are some strategies that can help to build the skills. The skill indicators are merely suggestions by the IB. These skills are not the definitive or exhaustive list of ATL skills. Schools are not required to cover them all. Instead, I think the important point is for schools to consider their own contexts, reflect on their school missions and develop own continuum of approaches to learning skills that can prepare students for the future.

Strategies must be used intentionally and practice deliberately. When choosing the strategy to explicitly teach specific skills, we need to consider our subject specific objectives, the complexity of of summative assessment, desired learning outcomes, and the age appropriateness. This document is named "ATL Smörgåsbord". Just like you are going to a buffet, there is a wide variety of food, and you will take only what you need.

​If you would like to contribute to the ATL Smörgåsbord, please use the Google Form to complete the process.

If you would like to obtain the original copy of the ATL Smörgåsbord, you can buy it now. The money received will be fully used to support the refugee scholars who attend my school. Read more about KIS refugee scholars here.

ATL Toolkit by Excited Educator Lenny Dutton: Lenny has created many amazing resources to help teachers teach ATL skills. She inspired me to create the ATL Smörgåsbord and collect explicit teaching strategies. Check out her website for more ideas.

The Art of Learning by Lance King: Lance emphasized the importance of helping students develop approaches to learning skills way before the IB made it a required component. He has shared and collected many amazing resources to support teachers in explicitly teaching ATL skills.

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This diagram was inspired by the blog post, The agile learner in a VUCA world, written by @alohalavina. VUCA is an acronym used to describe volatility , uncertainty , complexity , and .

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(Planner & Resources)

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Steps & Strategies for Developing Research Skills

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Steps & Strategies for Developing Research Skills

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This potential to find answers for ourselves is a skill that includes the ability to decide specifically what we want to know, to find information about a topic, evaluate that information, analyse and interpret the information and then put it all together in a way that brings us answers and solutions for ourselves. This is a skill that we want our students to develop.

The research sub- skills that our IB PYP students need, right from the earliest years include:

Observing

Formulating questions

Media literacy

Evaluating sources

Analysing & interpreting data

Synthesising

Reflecting

Presenting

We want to ensure that the children's research inquiries are structured in such a way that will introduce strategies and guide and support the children as they experience and develop those independent inquiry skills as an authentic part of their programme of inquiry. This is where we begin by explicitly teaching research skills. The same skills taught throughout the PYP look very different as we progress through the Primary Years Programme, progressively building upon them and extending the autonomy of our young researchers.

I use multiple resources to develop research skills throughout the year. It is an on-going part of embedding the Approaches to Learning Skills into our daily practice. You can link to many of the resources mentioned here by clicking on the images or the direct links.

I prefer to build upon the sub-skills, adding to them as we go. For the sake of simplicity, here are 5 steps I generally use to tackle developing research skills.

1. Observational Skills- Looking closely, looking slowly, close reading, inferring

2. Questioning Skills- Formulating questions , developing higher level questions, formulating conceptual questions, hypothesising, optimising research

3. Media Literacy- Understanding sources of information, evaluating reliability of sources, understanding primary & secondary sources, academic honesty

4. Analysing Information - Critical thinking, evaluating reliability of sources, close reading, questioning, going further, conceptual understanding

5. Recording the Research - note-taking, synthesising data, drawing conclusions, reflecting and communicating findings

As I explain each step, I also provide examples for putting it into practice. You can choose to read the entire article or scroll to the steps you're most interested with, for practical suggestions to take away.
1.Observational Skills: Putting It Into Practice: Observing closely, slow looking, going beyond the surface. Learning to reflect on what they see and drawing conclusions based on inductive and deductive reasoning.

Try this - The simplest way is with pictures and objects. The power of simple images and objects can take us into the realms of our metacognition (thinking skills) that will bring depth to their awareness of everything around them. We are developing thinkers and inquirers and this is where it begins - thinking about our thinking.
Putting It Into Practice:
2. Questioning Skills: Developing the ability to inquire, to ask questions, formulating higher level questions, conceptual questions and refining inquiries to optimise research results
Putting It Into Practice:
3. Media Literacy: Developing an awareness of media sources. Where do we find information? Understanding the form and function of a document, primary versus secondary sources, evaluating our sources and recording our sources.

By providing explicit teaching time to understanding where to find information and the form and function of different documents and sources of information, we are giving the children the directions to seek answers for themselves. Begin with tangible sources before moving into databases and web searches :

-identifying/ sorting fiction versus non-fiction sources

-compare and contrast pictures versus diagrams,

-scavenger hunt for data sources

-exploring and analysing charts, graphs, maps.

Provide a list of safe websites for easy, guided searches. As the children move up the school, look at primary sources versus secondary sources, how to do web searches and use databases.

Try this: This is a fake website that provides material for a perfect learning experience on how to carefully evaluate web sources and double check reliability. What clues do we look for in reliable sites? How can we double check our information?

Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus can be used in many different ways and for all ages. It's fun! I would advise structuring this learning experience rather than simply allowing the kids to explore freely.
Putting it Into Practice:
4. Analysing Information: Evaluating reliability of sources, critical thinking, questioning further, making connections, drawing conclusions, conceptual understanding

Web search skills: I prefer to begin this as a whole class lesson, modelling the search. We discuss the key points for evaluating a website, work with partners to evaluate a whole class (pre-planned) web search done using our Smartboard interactive screens and search for the following key points to determine reliability of our sources:

Ads. - Is the website advertising something?

Current -Is the information up to date?,

Authority -Is the website coming from a trusted expert?

Extent - Is the website providing in-depth information? Or is it too advanced?

Try this - The Critical Thinking Chart: Working in small groups, the children were given a search term and then they had to find a website that met those key points and another example of a site that did not meet those key points. They then evaluated the content of those those two sites ( safely) and compared the results. A verbal summary from each group, reflecting on the effectiveness of their sample sites was shared with the class. We created a chart of our findings to use as a reference tool. During research projects, I encouraged the children to check the key points on our chart for each of the sources they use.

Going Further & Adding Depth :This is where the children go beyond simply scratching the surface of their research. My experience, and what I hear from other teachers, is that the children have a tendency to stop when they have found the first source of information. They don't check their sources, question their sources or add to their inquiry.

Try this: Invite the children to go beyond page 1 while researching on the web. Many students only check top 2 or 3 sites. What can they find as they move past page 1? Reflect on the value and validity of the content beyond page 1 of the search engine.

Create a FACT TREE: This is basically a graphic organiser that is used to track and record the data found from the research. The starting question is going to be the root of the tree - for example, "How successful was the Roman Empire? (as revolutionaries?)" Then, on the branches growing from the tree, the children will write the facts/data that provide answers to the question along with the source. Younger children can use books, databases, encyclopedias etc. gathered by the teacher. Older children can use a web search using safe sites, databases etc. The challenge is that each fact must come from a separate source. You can encourage the children to find at least a set number of sources of information to complete their fact trees.

Putting it into Practice
5.Recording Our Discoveries: synthesising information, note taking, summarising their findings and presenting their discoveries. This is the part that the children LOVE! Slowing them down and helping them work through each of the steps is important to the quality of their research and the standard of their results. At the same time, we have to find that balance so that research becomes something that can be enjoyed.

Note taking: Beginning with visible thinking routines and graphic organisers, we explicitly provide the children with tools that structure and guide their thinking. I suggest that you stick to only 2-3 thinking routines until the children become familiar with those strategies and will begin to select them or create them for themselves. There are many different resources out there that you can use or even create your own versions to suit your students. If youre looking for ready-made, ready-to-go, Lidia at The Art of Inquiry has a great selection. You can link to her store here.

Paraphrasing: Teach how to paraphrase at an age appropriate level

Develop critical thinking by providing time to share and discuss their collected information

Presentations: provide opportunities to present their information in different forms.

Give time to reflect on their research.

Demonstrate integrity within research: citing sources at the age appropriate level.

Next week, I shall be sharing the tools that I use for on-going development of research skills and how they connect with the rest of the Approaches to Learning Skills. If you just cant wait and would like to see those tools now, you can find them in my store here. Just search RESEARCH and they will pop up.

Remember that you can keep up to date with all of the tips and strategies and PYP teaching tools by subscribing below. That way you won't miss out on the freebies that are sent to subscribers too. 🙂

Until next time, enjoy!

P.S. If you'd like to know more about embedding the Approaches to Learning Skills, you can read about it in this article too.

FOLLOW ME HERE, FOLLOW ME THERE.....

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Steps & Strategies for Developing Research Skills in the IB PYP

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Research. The ability to help ourselves to find an answer to a question or the solution to a problem. This potential to find answers for ourselves is a skill that includes the ability to decide specifically what we want to know, to find information about a topic, evaluate that information...

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Conceptual Understanding & Learning Transfer

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Conceptual Understanding & Learning Transfer

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Conceptual Understanding and Learning Transfer

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IB PYP Yearly mapping tool for concepts-approaches to learning-learnerprofile

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Checklist

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2015 개정교육과정학년군별 성취기준 맵핑

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2015 개정교육과정학년군별 성취기준 맵핑

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(출처) 경상남도교육청

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2015개정교육과정학년군별성취기준맵핑자료